“I can make you an egg, Mama. Would you like an egg?” Nicolina asked.
Olimpio held Matelda’s hand. “She’s cold as ice. Get a blanket, please.”
“I don’t feel cold.” Matelda watched the seagulls circle in the distance over the beach.
Matelda was calm. The priest had brought her Holy Communion. She had given her confession, and as a bonus, he offered her the Anointing of the Sick. She happily accepted the sacrament. In her mind, it was insurance. She did not want to do anything between this moment and the hour of her death that might prevent her from seeing the face of God. Her conscience felt buoyant in her body. For any evil she had done, she had asked for forgiveness. She had not wasted time. Women rarely did. They squeezed each moment out of the day serving others. But the good left undone? Had she been enough? Done enough? No answer came, but it wasn’t her problem anymore. Her final desire was to leave this world in a state of grace. His will be done would be her redemption. The only thing left for her soul to do was the business of her salvation. Matelda took a deep breath and did not cough. Her lungs opened to the sea air like a bellows.
Nicolina returned with the blanket and Anina.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Matelda looked at the tourmaline-blue sea. She had waited for spring and the color to return, and miracle of miracles, it had. Even though she hadn’t put her feet in the sand, she felt herself sink into the powdery bliss as the sea water filled in between her toes, making clay from the tide, then puddles cooling the soles of her feet. Little pink fish gathered around her feet and nibbled at her toes. Far away on the horizon, billows of coral clouds settled in the light, making a path to the sun. Matelda squinted down the hemline of the white shore, when she saw her mother on the beach. Matelda sat up in her chair. She saw a little girl run toward her mother. She recognized the girl. “Domenica! My Domenica,” she whispered.
It was then that she heard the braying of an elephant, or was it the trumpet voluntary of the angels, or Puccini’s revelry? Whatever it was, the sound was sweet.
Nicolina followed her mother’s gaze and surveyed the beach. “Do you see something, Mama?”
“She said Domenica. Nonna, what do you mean?” Anina asked her.
But Matelda did not hear her. As she began to leave the world, their voices and words became a language she did not know. Each aspect of her person began to fold, one into the other, until her soul rose from her body. She felt herself become faceted light, rays of the brightest white sun set in the deepest blue.
Matteo sprinted out onto the terrace. “Mama!” He leaned down and kissed his mother. “You look good, Mama.”
Matelda did not hear him.
“It’s me. Your Matteo,” he said loudly before looking desperately at his father, sister, and niece. “Something’s wrong with her. Call the doctor!” When his father didn’t move quickly enough to his liking, Matteo, frustrated, stood and felt his pockets to find his phone.
Anina knelt before Matelda. The perfume she had spritzed on her grandmother that morning filled the air with the scent of gardenia. Anina buried her face in Matelda’s neck. She whispered, “It’s all right, Nonna. Go to your mother.”
Matelda took three short breaths and bowed her head. Anina stood.
Olimpio knelt before his wife, placing his hands on hers. He made the sign of the cross.
“What happened? Do something!” Matteo took her wrist. “Don’t go, Mama.” But there was no pulse. Matteo cried and turned away.
Nicolina stood behind Matelda with her hands placed gently on her mother’s shoulders, protecting her like an archangel. Tears silently flowed down her cheeks. In the bright sun, Nicolina’s face appeared to be made of varnished plaster like the saints in the courtyard at San Paolino.
Even though the ocean had called Matelda all her life, it had just been a lure to catch her eye. In fact, it was the sky overhead that would become the gateway to the eternal. It was the sky Matelda would reach. Her soul would ascend through a portal of clouds to a brocade of stars where she would find her mother and daughter, the father who raised her, and the father she never knew again.
“Fly.” Olimpio wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. “Fly.” He kissed his wife goodbye. Anina turned away and wept until the sea her grandmother had loved became a blur of blue.
* * *
The bells of Chiesa San Paolino rang as Matelda McVicars Cabrelli Roffo was carried out of the church and into the morning light fractured by the cypress trees. Olimpio stood behind the casket with Matelda’s brother, Nino, and his wife, Patrizia, followed by Matelda’s children and grandchildren. The spring day was neither warm nor cold, but suitable for one of Matelda’s beloved walks through the village.
Ida Casciacarro nodded to Giusto Figliolo, who took her arm as they processed behind the casket and family out of the church and into the piazza. Row by row, the ushers directed the standing-room-only crowd to recess.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Ida whispered. “She kept telling me she was going to die; I just didn’t want to believe her.”
“She knew, Ida.” Figliolo remembered the day Matelda had given him a golden apple. “If we pay attention, we will recognize the day and the hour.”
“It’s that bird. That fat seagull! The bastard nipped her and marked her for death. If the superstition hadn’t killed her, the germs would’ve.”
“You talked to a strega?”
Ida shook her head that she hadn’t. “I have a little strega in me, you know. The Metriones could be seers when none were available. When that bird attacked her, I thought, The end is near.” Ida dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. “I don’t like being right.”